So what's for dinner?

we're low on cash and food right now, so I'm just eating some boiled eggs and letting the people fend for themselves xD

orange/cranberry sauce on pork and mash

Casserole ULTRAGOTHA (I've posted this recipe before):

1 15 ounce can black beans
1 15 ounce can corn
1 16 ounce (or thereabouts) bottle of salsa
1 8 ounce packet of Neufchatel cream cheese

Dump it all in a pot and heat until the cheese is melted and stirred in thoroughly. Alternatively, dump it in a slow cooker and cook on low all day, then add the cheese near the end and stir thoroughly.

Serve over rice or with nacho chips

You can add anything else to this that you have at hand and looks good—onions, peppers, chicken, shrimp, you name it. It’s very versatile.

It’s also dead cheap. I can make it for under $5 and it feeds the two of us for two or three meals, depending on how much rice I make or what else I put in it.

Leftover Casserole

Cooked pasta with tomato sauce, mozzeralla, parmesan cheese, and leftover taco-seasoned meat, all mixed together and baked. Usually I add ricotta, but I don't have any on hand. So it's Italian-Mexican tonight. The guys love it.

(Like Ultragotha, I might have posted this before.)

Leftover vegetarian chili. And green salad. My standard chili recipe makes a LOT.

--Ken

Barbecued chicken on the grill made with homemade barbecue sauce, with roasted delicata squash and grilled corn.

So, the barbecue sauce wasn't supposed to be homemade. But we have these smoked chicken wings in the freezer, and you only have to pop them under the broiler to crisp them and they're done. I wanted mine with barbecue sauce a few nights ago, but we were out. As we live in the woods, it's kind of a chore to go into town when you need one thing, so I looked up a recipe and then adjusted it to my tastes. Turned out amazing.

This too-lazy-to-drive-but-not-do-a-bunch-of-work has led me to make homemade butterfingers, marshmallows (though the flavor of these is worth it), puffed rice (to combine with the aforementioned marshmallows into a rice krispie treat), and butter, among other things.

Leftover Halloween candy.

Last night we went to another friend's house for a pumpkin carving party. He's a fantastic cook.

Beer and cheese soup with bacon.
Hot chocolate. The good stuff. Cream and melted chocolate in a crock pot. Bliss.
mini pumpkin pies.
cheese and crackers
scallops wrapped in bacon.
Baked brie
spinach dip with veggies or bread
stuffed mushrooms.

I'm full just thinking about it. We got to take home some soup and the hot chocolate and some of the pies. I had pie for breakfast. :-D

I'm being brave today. I made homemade ravioli with an imitation lobster, parmesan and mozzarella stuffing. I seasoned it with garlic powder, onion powder, Worchestershire sauce and chili powder (not a fan of real veges.)

It's brave because I have no standing mixer, nor dough hooks, nor rollers. All I had was my own two (now VERY tired) hands and a rolling pin. I substituted virgin pecan oil for the olive oil called for in the dough, and have my fingers tightly crossed that it will taste amazing.

I had to laugh at the recipe that said: Yield: 12 ravioli. I followed the directions exactly and made twelve that were an inch thick at the edges and 3" square! Three more kneading and rolling later and I had a more reasonable 24 squares with 1/8th" edges.

I'll let you know it goes. Fortunately, Alfredo sauce covers a wide range of sins.

Meat pie. Made with ground beef, browned onions, hard boiled egg, savory, saltnpeppa, & shredded cheddar, all together in a pie crust & baked. It's in the oven now!

I sometimes make the same mixture as pasties (using half the filling, twice the crust), but this time I'm doing one pie-sized pie, which will provide me with lunches all week.

The original recipe calls for a crust made with sour cream, which is easy and yummy, but I'm not that good at rolling it out so I let the good people at Pillsbury do the honors.

Chicken soup with noodles cooked in the broth on the side. I found an AMAZING deal at Kroger for chicken. (Hint, if you shop at Kroger they have whole fryers at .88/lb this week.)

We were all in town to sign paperwork for the farm and make some decisions about land use so my sister made carnitas for a sit down family dinner. Carnitas are pretty elaborate to make. The recipe takes hours. I don't spend half an hour in the kitchen if I can avoid it. The recipe requires soaking chunks of pork roast in milk, orange juice and peppers and then boiling the pork in spices for an hour or two, before roasting it in the oven.

I would never attempt this but my sister likes to cook. She served it with tortillas, borracho beans, avocado slices, the last of the corn and tomatoes. My contribution was a white coconut cake. Mrs Pepperidge helped me whomp it up--s6

I've reverted to age 11 and am eating english muffin pizzas.

I haven't made them in years, but I'd planned to make pizza and was too lazy to make crust. I love them, actually.

English muffin pizzas are too good to waste on 11 year olds.

ULTRAGOTHA said:

English muffin pizzas are too good to waste on 11 year olds.

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You know, I think I agree. I don't know why I don't eat them more often -- I think it's been years.

They were one of my favorite lunches when I was a little kid, which I suppose is why I think of them as kid food. But I put fresh basil and mushrooms on mine tonight, so they were a bit more grown up.

Chicken legs and cheesy hash browns. The chicken's currently back in the oven since I don't think it was in long enough or the temperature was high enough. Man, I don't mind rare meat but that was nuts.

Rare steak I'm good with, but rare chicken is a bad idea.

Carnitas are awesome.

I had homemade bread with butter and fig jam for dinner. Breakfast was dinner (steak, and sweet potato, biscuits and honey).

Just an off topic question about the carnitas, how do you avoid curdling the milk when it mixes with the oj?

I figured it would be a long evening of watching election returns, so I planned a dinner option. Salad (my wife assembled that, as she usually does), pizza (fine, it's DiGiorno, not delivery), and wings.

The wings were the interesting part. Pound+ of "party wings" prepared in slow cooker. Drizzled some barbeque sauce on bottom of pan and splashed in some cheap Christian Brothers cream sherry (since I'd run out of the good stuff from Chateau Julian; but the result from the $4.99 bottle was as good as the $32 stuff). Rubbed the wings with some Tajin lime-infused Mexican seasoning and plopped them into the pan (deep stainless steel sitting on a slow-cooker base); drizzled on more BBQ sauce (Rufus Teague) and more cream sherry, added a sprinkle of salt and a sprinkling of dried chopped onion.

Got up to a boil at medium setting on slow cooker, and then turned down, and down further and further later. Six or seven hours in the cooker, making the house smell good. (The sugar in the BBQ sauce is prone to burning, so it is essential to keep an eye on the temp.)

Result was very, very good, tasty and fall-off-the-bone tender. I need to print out the recipe for future use.

And wine. Needed a couple of glasses of that to handle the election results.

--Ken

Wow, Ken, that sounds delicious! And we're all great fans of Rufus Teague. I haven't found a better BBQ sauce at the market.

Calm Chowder and wife bread.

Calm chowder sounds very soothing...

It's kind of a Jeopardy! joke. Ages ago one of the kid's week contestants was giving advice to another kid's week contestant and she said the main thing was to "keep clam".

Veteran Jeopardy! contestants agreed that, while keeping calm was important, keeping your mouth (and button) silent when you weren't sure of the answer was even more important, and "keep clam" was very good advice.

Tried the new tofu option from Chipotle...not bad.